POST-MORTEM. Republicans are taking stock of the situation they’re in as a result of Tuesday night’s surprising upset in a New Hampshire House special election in a district where registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by a more than 2-1 margin.

Undeclared voters are the largest segment of the voting population in Rockingham County District 4, which includes Auburn, Chester and Sandown, as they are statewide. In those three towns, independents number 5,196, or 42.9 of the registered voters. Republicans number 5,052 or 39.7 percent; and Democrats number 2,463, or 19.3 percent. Those are the most recent official figures posted by the secretary of state’s office in April.

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According to the state Democratic Party, Rockingham District 4 is the fourth-“reddest” district in the state. The final result, confirmed by the secretary of state’s office Wednesday, was 901 for Democratic state Rep.-elect Kari Lerner, 862 for Republican former Rep. Jim Headd and 41 for Libertarian James Jarvis.

Headd on Wednesday filed for a recount, which will likely be held early next week, according to Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan.

How did it happen?

We spoke with several seasoned Republican operatives, and the consensus is that the state GOP is simply out-flanked by the state Democratic Party in its ability to get out the vote.

The main problem seems to be that there are only two full-time staffers at the NHGOP (three if recently assigned Republican National Committee state director Ashley Walukevich is included) as compared to 12 at the state Democratic Party.

It means that it’s difficult, at best, for the NHGOP to keep up when several special elections occur in succession. The NHDP assigns specific staffers to specific elections. The NHGOP staffers must jump from election to election, and in this case, had only a week to organize a get-out-the-vote effort. The operatives we spoke to said that they were not trying to disparage the staffers, who were described as “good and smart and talented.”

It takes money to hire staff, and the NHGOP simply is not on par with the Democrats in that department, either, they said.

“The bottom line is that it’s about who can whip the turnout the most,” one operative said. “And that has little to do with party registrations in a low-turnout special election.”

These Republicans said the result of Tuesday’s election and prior special election upsets by the Democrats were not a referendum on President Donald Trump or Gov. Chris Sununu. One operative said, “It is not a sign of apathy. It’s the party’s job to organize elections, but there’s a a lack of manpower.”

They point out that Sununu did, in fact, spend time in the district with Headd and previously spent time with other Republicans who lost special elections this year. And Sununu and former Sen. Kelly Ayotte cut radio ads for former state Sen. David Boutin, who lost a special election in Hooksett, Candia, Bow, Dunbarton and Manchester Wards 1, 2 and 12 in late July.

Seven special legislative elections have been held since May 23, and Democrats have won five -- and four of them were in mostly Republican districts. The NHDP says that taken together, Democratic candidates outperformed the combined registrations of the contested districts by an average of 17 percent.

POST-MORTEM. Republicans are taking stock of the situation they’re in as a result of Tuesday night’s surprising upset in a New Hampshire House special election in a district where registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by a more than 2-1 margin.